Three Pies, Two Pilots, Some Ill-Fated Cookies, and a Command Wolf
by Chaotic Century
Summary: Who is Zeke's real pilot, anyway? Is it Dan, or Willow? And will those two stop squabbling long enough for Zeke to carry his delicious desert desserts to their destination safely? A side project to the Earthling trilogy set a year after "Remain in the Light of the Stars"; Battle Story/Chaotic Century timeline.
1. ZAC 2066: Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This story is a companion piece to the "Earthling" trilogy and is set in that continuity, in ZAC 2066, a year after the epilogue to "Remain in the Light of the Stars." It is strongly recommended to read at least "Earthling" and "Remain" in order to understand the context here.  
I gladly and gratefully credit FanFiction user C.B. Magique for the plot suggestion that formed the basis for this story.  
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy it, and reviews are, as always, deeply appreciated.

 **DEDICATION  
** _For C.B. Magique, for your dedicated readership, constructive reviews, and brilliant idea - thank you for granting me this precious additional time among friends.  
_ _And for Tigerhawk, my future husband, for all of the support and research help (and by "research help" I mean "spouting everything I needed to know right off the top of your head because you're a smart little cookie like that"). Love you from here to Zi._

* * *

 **ZAC 2066  
 _Chapter 1_**

"What on Earth...?"

Dan straightened from where he had been retrieving something from the oven and regarded his fiancée with raised eyebrows.

Willow shook her head impatiently. "Sorry. Force of habit." She gestured to the glorious, heavenly object Dan held in his mitt-clad hands. "What on Zi...?"

"What on Zi is what, darling?" he replied, setting the object on the counter to cool.

Her shining dark eyes were like saucers. "Did you - did you bake a pie?"

"Three, actually."

"Three pies?!" Some bits of her hair were plastered to her forehead with sweat and grease from another busy day at work. It gave her a bit of a wild look as her gaze first took in the trio of delicacies in question, then morosely slid over to the glass container on the table filled with the sugar cookies she had made that morning. She eyed them with an expression that could only be described as abject despair.

Dan followed her gaze to the container. He knew Willow wasn't much of a baker; she had only recently in her life gained access to such extravagant luxuries as butter and sugar. And he knew, too, that the doughy, misshapen lumps currently residing in the container represented, despite appearances, a good deal of conscious, struggling effort on her part. She had really wanted to try her best.

He had wanted to try his best, too, though he was not much in the mood to admit this to himself, let alone acknowledge what that meant. Three laboriously-constructed pies, utilizing black market ingredients, no less, did suddenly seem more than a tad excessive. He wondered if anyone else would look at it that way, or if he were simply being neurotic.

"What kind of pies are they?" Willow pressed hungrily, approaching the counter. He looked up.

"Gemberry."

Her eyebrows shot up and her dazed aspect was shed at once. "Gemberries? But aren't those -"

"From the Empire? Yes."

"But isn't there -"

"A trade embargo? Yes."

She peered at him curiously. "So then where'd you get them from?"

He shrugged. "I know a guy."

Willow looked over at the pies again. They were plump, impeccably round, with intricately latticed glossy crusts and flawlessly scalloped edges. The one he had most recently taken out of the oven was steaming picturesquely in the slanting sunlight of late afternoon. The indescribable domestic perfection of this little tableau was almost obscene.

"Why gemberries?" she asked after a moment, and then the answer dawned on her at the same moment that Dan replied.

"Well, I thought Phoenix might enjoy a bit of a taste of home..." Willow looked at him. "He must miss it there, right?"

"You sure went above and beyond with these. Like, really above and beyond. I had no idea you were such an accomplished baker! I feel kind of pathetic in comparison."

Dan shrugged again, inexplicably feeling both appreciated and defensive. "It was no trouble."

"Right. No trouble at all." Willow took one last exasperated look at the deformed, sorrowful results of her earnest, earlier attempt at cookies and sighed. "I'm going to go shower and then I guess we can get a move on, okay?"

Dan nodded and watched her go. Why was she acting so strangely? Gazing back at his cooling pies, his own behavior suddenly seemed painfully transparent, not to mention more than a touch insensitive, which probably answered that question.

The truth was, although Willow had been excited nearly to the point of delirium over their planned trip, he himself was far from enthusiastic. He'd only just gotten home from his latest tour, and almost immediately after their typical gleeful reunion, she had broken the news of accepting Phoenix's invitation for a visit. "Won't it be grand?" she'd squealed. "You two will finally get to meet!" All Dan had wanted was some peace and quiet in the Wind Colony, unwinding from deployment with the love of his life, but in the face of such overwhelming happiness on her part, he hadn't had it in him to protest.

He sighed now, too. Not only had he unwittingly showed up all of Willow's efforts and then proceeded to stick his foot in his mouth besides, but Phoenix was no fool, and would probably see right through such a flimsy facade, anyway.

Those stupid pies had been a mistake.


	2. ZAC 2066: Chapter 2

_**Chapter 2**_

Willow stepped over the threshold into a golden early evening, precariously ferrying three boxed pies and a container of cookies in her arms, then Dan shut the door behind them both and locked it. He picked up their suitcases. "All set?" She merely nodded, concentrating very deeply on not dropping any of her fragile burden. While her cookies probably deserved the ignominious end of tumbling into the dusty ground, to in any way harm the pies would arguably leave her open to prosecution for murder. "Okay then." Dan's eyes found the shining white Command Wolf recumbent in the far corner of the yard, calmly observing as they approached. "It'll be so nice to pilot my own Zoid again," he mused to himself, absently swinging their suitcases to and fro. Nothing the Helic Army could provide him ever felt as good as a Command Wolf, and stepping into Zeke's cockpit always felt like coming home.

"What was that, dear?"

Dan turned back to face her. "Hmm?"

"Did you say you were piloting?" Willow asked politely from behind the mountain of baked goods obscuring her face.

"Yeah, why?"

"Oh, because I figured that I would be piloting Zeke for this trip."

"Really? Why would you have figured that?" Dan asked, slightly befuddled and therefore genuinely curious.

"Why wouldn't I have?" Willow replied, also befuddled and therefore curious.

They had come to a stop and were both just standing there, about thirty feet away from Zeke, staring at each other.

"Well, because," Dan said lamely.

Willow said nothing and regarded him archly, allowing the silence between them to swell so awkwardly that he was forced to continue.

"I should get to pilot because...because I'm Zeke's pilot," he continued, both annoyed at and impressed by the efficacy of this maneuver.

"I am, too."

Zeke picked his head up and watched them both.

"Well, he's my Zoid."

"He's mine, too." Dan blinked at her. "Or don't you remember, when you abandoned me with him at Solas Base several years ago?"

Oh, that was so cold. "I didn't _abandon_ you, first of all, and secondly, I was just letting you _borrow_ him."

"Yes you very much _did_ abandon me, and besides which, possession is nine-tenths of the law," Willow shot back.

"Yes, but -" Dan paused, confused. "Wait, what? I don't even know what that means!"

"Case law from Earth," Willow clarified testily.

"We're not _on_ Earth!"

"I _know_ we're not!"

Zeke whined.

"So then why would you even bring that up? As if the laws from some planet that may or may not even exist anymore on the other side of the galaxy are in fact relevant to this discussion?" He stopped. To reference her home planet in such a flippant manner might have been just a trifle insensitive. Probably ought to apologize. "Willow, I -" he began.

"Zeke likes me better," she muttered, almost under her breath.

"He _what?!_ " Dan dropped the suitcases, all atonement intent forgotten. "Oh, no, no, no. You did not just say that. We are _not_ having this conversation." He stabbed a finger through the air in the direction of an increasingly-distressed Command Wolf. "Zeke is _my_ Zoid, and _I'm_ his pilot, and he likes _me_ better!"

Zeke whined again, louder.

Willow was already shaking her head. "I am his sole caretaker while you're away - which is basically all of the time, by the way, whether you're abandoning me in empty ruins or gone on deployment - and so where do you think his loyalties lie? With an absentee 'parent,' or with his beloved mommy who nurtures and cares for him always?"

Zeke squirmed unhappily and barked, but his two bickering pilots paid him no heed.

"Oh yeah, well...well...I'm a lot bigger than you so it's a lot more uncomfortable for me to ride in the jumpseat!"

"Yeah, well, Phoenix might think that they were under attack if anyone besides me is piloting! He doesn't even know what you look like!"

"I'm the better pilot!"

"No, I am!"

"But I was trained in the military!"

"And when was the last time you took out any desert gangs, exactly?"

Dan knew Willow well enough by now to be aware of the breathtaking stubborn streak she carried, and knew too that no amount of reasoning with her was likely to end this argument. And so, he opted for the cheapest, but most surefire scheme of all.

"Fine, then whoever gets to Zeke first gets to pilot!"

Having already unburdened himself of the items he'd been carrying, he took off like a shot across the yard, knowing Willow would have to carefully set down the pies and cookies she had in her arms before being able to give chase. Despite her relatively diminutive height and consequently shorter legs, she was, in fact, a very fast runner - possibly even faster than he himself was - and he well knew that this juvenile tactic was likely the only way he was going to win. It was a testament to his unconscious trust in Willow's sense of ethics that it did not even occur to him that her competitive nature might have her abandon all notion of preserving the pies' bodily integrity, but fortunately for both him and the pies, she was not that cruel.

"Hey!" she yelled instead, placing the pile of tasty treats down on the ground as gently as possible and taking off after him.

Panting slightly, Dan arrived at Zeke's snout well in advance of his fiancée. He raised a fist in triumph. "I win, I win! That means I get to pilot."

"That was a lame trick and you know it!" argued Willow, arriving seconds later.

"You're just being a sore loser," Dan replied with an irritating grin. He gave Zeke's jaw a brisk little pat. "Okay buddy, open up! We need to hit the road."

But Zeke was as still as a statue.

Dan pat the big wolf a little harder. "Yo, Zeke! Come on, it's time to go!"

"He probably doesn't want you to pilot him because he likes me better," Willow said, smugly crossing her arms over her chest.

"You and that smart mouth," Dan muttered, then hoped immediately that the level of admiration and arousal behind his words were not evident to her. He would never admit it, but he thought Willow getting a little feisty and self-important was probably the hottest thing ever. "Right," he said, stepping back and furthermore swiftly changing the subject, "you get him to open on up, then."

Willow approached. "Hey Zeke," she said to him quietly, "can you please open up? We have a dinner engagement tomorrow to make."

Zeke did not move an inch.

"Come on, friend," she said, her voice low and calming. "Please?"

Still he would not budge.

Willow looked questioningly at Dan, their argument already overridden by mutual concern and therefore forgotten. "Do you think something's wrong with him?"

Dan scratched the back of his head, eyeing their Zoid. "I don't know. He was moving around just a minute ago, wasn't he? I'd say maybe all his systems got somehow powered down, but..."

"We would have heard that little whir," Willow concurred, finishing the thought. "So then what's going on?"

"I...have no idea. He's never done anything like this before."

Willow thought back over everything that Foscadh, her former supervisor and former owner of the garage that Willow now managed, had ever taught her. Her mind alighted on a time Foscadh had been helping Willow work with a particularly stubborn Pteras. No matter what Willow did, she could not get the Zoid to move, even though it was fully powered and registering absolutely no issues or abnormalities that she could find.

"I've never seen this before myself, but I've heard of such things happening," Foscadh had said then, as she'd contemplated the creature's unmoving wings.

"What do you mean? What's wrong with it?" Willow had asked.

"Zoids are living things. It's easy to forget that, with their gears and circuits and sophisticated computer systems, but they're just as alive and feeling as you and me," Foscadh told her. "This one hasn't been acting right since I gave it the paint job its owner had requested."

The Pteras _was_ a rather sickly shade of green, Willow conceded. "So you think it's unhappy with its new look, huh?"

Foscadh nodded and put her hand on the Pteras' leg, looking up at its still head. "I'm going to need to speak to the owner about this. Hopefully they'd accept a nice shade of silver or blue or something. What use is a Zoid that's too grouchy to work with its pilot?"

Willow turned to Dan now. "You know...I'll bet he's upset at us."

"Upset?" Dan raised his eyebrows at her, then looked at Zeke.

"For fighting. I can't imagine that's all that pleasant for him, because -"

"- Because he cares about us both," Dan agreed. "Is that true, buddy?"

Zeke gave a low, unhappy growl.

"Oh, Zeke," Willow sighed.

"Hey, it's okay, pal," Dan soothed. He put his arm around Willow's shoulders. "Sometimes Willow and I disagree about things, such as who's the better pilot - which is me, by the way." Willow elbowed him. "But that doesn't mean we don't love each other."

Zeke picked his head up and regarded them both, vocalizing softly, hopefully.

"Dan's right, Zeke," Willow added. "Except about who's the better pilot, because obviously that's me. But we can argue while still loving each other - and loving you, too."

Zeke's tail made a pleased little whump on the ground (and nearly flattened an adjacent bush). He barked.

"Now, if you're feeling better, will you please open your canopy?" Dan said. There was a pregnant pause, and then, slowly, the orange glass raised. He turned to Willow, his eyes alight with amusement. "Would you like to pilot, my dear?"

Willow laughed. "How about you get us there, and I'll get us home?"

He nodded, kissing her cheek. "That's fine by me, darling. Let's get these pies secured in the storage compartment in case they get jostled about a bit, and you can carry your cookies in the cockpit. Sound like a plan?"

"Sounds like a plan."

Something occurred to him just then. "Oh, and - thank you for not just dropping the pies on the ground before. Those gemberries were really expensive."

Willow laughed again, and Zeke growled happily, glad that everything had returned to normal and his two pilots were getting along again.


	3. ZAC 2066: Chapter 3

_**Chapter 3**_

The desert was beautiful in the twilight. Soft purple cloaked the sky and a lulling quiet had descended upon the cockpit. Dan was perched comfortably in the pilot's seat, seemingly relaxed and attentive as he guided Zeke's tireless jog, but he was anything but. His mind churned with worries and half-baked possibilities as the wolf journeyed closer and closer to their destination: What if Dan embarrassed himself somehow? What if Willow laid eyes on Phoenix again for the first time in two years and realized she was madly in love with him? And what would Phoenix think of him? Would he judge him? Would he find Dan lacking, undeserving, and try to steal Willow away?

He shook his head, trying to dislodge this cacophony of fears. It was because of him that Willow had had the chance to spend so much time with Phoenix in the first place, so really, this entire situation was all his own fault. Phoenix was probably ridiculously good-looking and smart and talented and funny, too, more than he himself would ever be, but Willow had remained loyal, anyway. That had to count for something, right? Right?

He sighed, a bit more loudly than he'd meant to.

"What's up?" Willow asked.

She never missed a thing.

He could feel her presence there behind him in the jumpseat, even when she was completely silent and still, as if he had some kind of sensor attuned to her energy the way Zeke could detect other Zoids. He remembered a time, about seven years ago now, when she had first been perched back there, still essentially an alien on this planet, a time when her future, and theirs together, was still unknown. It all seemed so long ago.

"Nothing," he told her. "I was just thinking."

She leaned forward to be closer to him - and he remembered too how it had felt all those years ago when he would awkwardly reach behind him to squeeze her hand - and he soon felt her fingers ruffling his spiked hair affectionately. "Thinking about how the student has surpassed the master?" she teased.

"Not likely," he grumbled. "Real cute." But he closed his eyes for just a moment, savoring the sensation of her touch.

"Sometimes it's difficult to accept when one is past one's prime and it's time to let the up-and-comers take the lead, but I'm sure you'll -" Her remark was cut off by an ear-splitting series of beeps. "What is it?!"

"We've got company," Dan said immediately, his eyes flying over the console's monitor readouts. "Two enemy Zoids on our six." He swung Zeke around to face the threat.

A screen popped up with a video feed from one of the other Zoids. "We'll be relieving you of your valuables now," an utterly non-descript young man who appeared barely out of his teenage years sneeringly informed them, "but rest assured you will not be harmed unless you put up a -"

Dan, already bored, closed out the video feed before the man had even finished speaking.

"Seriously, guys?" Willow shouted at them, not that they could hear. "More Sandburners? In the desert? Coming to bother us? _Seriously?!_ "

"Don't think they're Sandburners, dear. Didn't you say they had some telltale facial marking on their noses or something?"

"No, darling, those were the _other_ bandits."

"Oh. Well, nuts to that Guysak over there, but did the bad guys have Zoids like a Black Rhimos last time?"

"No, but bandits seem to get their hands on some pretty sweet equipment sometimes. Guess these losers are moving up in the world."

"What do you think, my love? Shall we say hello?"

Zeke pawed the ground impatiently.

Willow looked at the clock display on one of the monitors. "Oh, sweetheart, I don't know. Playtime with stupid bandits is fun and all, but we're already behind schedule. I really don't want to be late for our dinner plans tomorrow. It would be terribly rude."

"As you wish, my angel," Dan said with an apathetic shrug. He turned them back south, away from the interlopers, and Zeke took off at a gallop.

Within a second of his doing so, however, another round of deafening beeps, this time indicating target lock and incoming fire, blasted through the cockpit.

"Hang on!" Dan yelled as he swerved Zeke violently to one side to avoid the missile. The cockpit shook as the ordnance slammed into a shallow dune Zeke had only just veered past, and the wolf momentarily stumbled, growling fiercely as the resulting heat from the explosion seared the exposed backs of his hind legs.

In the midst of these evasive maneuvers and subsequent damage, Dan heard a loud crack then an exaggerated sniffle from behind him a second before something softly bumped the back of his left boot, but he didn't have enough time to register what any of these things could mean. "Come on, buddy, come on, get up, walk it off," he urged. "You're fine, you're fine." Operating statuses were reporting overloaded circuits in both rear ankles, likely due to the missile's heat blast; acceleration and reaction times were impacted.

Zeke got back to his feet, snarling, more offended than hurt.

"You alright back there?" Dan asked Willow as he turned Zeke once more to face the bandits. He'd have to clean this up quick so they weren't late getting to Socracht.

"My cookies..."

In just those two anguished words, Dan knew that Willow was in tears. He spun around in his seat. She was looking past the glass container in her hands, which had cracked in two, and at her feet. Dan looked down, too, and saw her cookies scattered all over the floor, now a crumbled, broken mess. A couple of rogue cookies had rolled under his seat and reached his feet, as well, he also noticed.

"Willow..."

She had gotten up well before the sun had even risen that morning, so she would have plenty of time to ready the cookies before work. She had spent hours laboriously measuring, mixing, and baking, and, if her extended morning racket in the kitchen were anything to go by, it had taken her at least four separate attempts to actually achieve an edible result. She had poured her heart and soul into those cookies. And now all of that hard work was ruined.

Eyeing the approaching Guysak and Black Rhimos, Dan suddenly found he didn't know what to say. What words were there to comfort her for something like this?

"Willow, I -" he gamely began, but he was cut off by the sight of her right arm out of the corner of his eye, reaching forward to the console, bashing upwards into the switch to raise the canopy. "Hey, what are you - ? We're sitting ducks with the canopy up!"

"I'm piloting now," she said, her statement a quiet, cresting wave of ice-cold fury, her eyes hard and glinting like diamonds, her tone brooking no argument. It wasn't a question. Dan said nothing, and simply unbuckled his safety harness. She practically shoved him out of the way as they performed the awkward swap, and she was buckled in and closing the canopy again before he had even crammed himself into the jumpseat with a crackling mess of crumbs at his feet. "Hang on," was all she said, and he grabbed on to the pilot's seat for dear life as, at her command, Zeke dove forward, transitioning from a standstill to a full-on sprint within two strides.

"Be careful, his ankles -" Dan tried again, but he stopped speaking the moment he was mashed backwards by Zeke's breathtaking, borderline reckless, surge of speed. How was the wolf even able to run like that after the missile damage? On top of all this, he was baying with a bloodlust Dan had never heard before. He didn't know whether he should be feeling intimidated by what had come over his fiancée and Zoid, or profoundly impressed. Ultimately, as he observed her outrage at work and the incredible way Zeke was responding, he settled for both.

He clung to Willow's seatback as she drove Zeke towards their enemies. "Do you know," she bellowed while firing off a fusillade from the double beam cannons that lit up the twilit desert around them, "how long it took me" - another round that the bandits, startled by her sudden onrush of fury, just barely managed to dodge - "TO BAKE ALL THOSE COOKIES?!"

"Wh - what cookies? Ma'am?" one of them sniveled meekly over an audio channel, but it was too late for regret now.

Dan could do nothing but hold on and observe in mute awe as Willow, with no prompting whatsoever, did exactly what he himself would have done had he been piloting: zero in on the Black Rhimos, and its relatively unprotected rear. Amid the chaos it dimly occurred to Dan at the back of his mind that he probably had not given Willow's piloting skills sufficient credit earlier.

The lumbering Rhimos attempted to pivot to face the Command Wolf charging in a wide arc around and behind it, but its short legs and poor maneuverability made this a hopeless task. The Guysak fired frantically from its tail rifle, trying to cover its clumsy partner, but Zeke merely danced around the beams as though he had been sent the exact details of their trajectory by post several weeks ago.

He charged in close and took such a savage chomp out of the Rhimos' left buttock that the corresponding hind leg immediately gave out and the beast went down, bellowing with surprise and irritation all the while at having been bested so swiftly. Dan spared the console a glance just long enough to note that the enemy Zoid's command system had frozen.

"We're sorry about your cookies!" squeaked the young man who had initially spoken to them, his voice cracking like a newly-pubescent boy's. "Just - please, please leave us alone!"

"Nope," was all Willow said in response. Dan inwardly breathed a sigh of relief that Willow was his life partner and not his enemy. He held fast to the back of the pilot's seat as Zeke dodged further incoming fire to close in on the Guysak. It swung its pincers desperately to keep him at bay, but to no avail: Zeke seemed to sense and then pass through a Command Wolf-sized space in the pincers' motions to come directly face to face with the Guysak. He dipped his head, buried his snout beneath the scorpion's face and chest, then reared upwards with everything he had, easily flipping the Guysak onto its back. Its lengthy tail, pinned under its full body weight by the maneuver, promptly snapped.

"I think you've probably won alrea -" Dan started, but Willow wasn't finished. She drove Zeke forward, towards and around their prone enemy, and then he bit into first one set of pincers, then the other, securing his grip and then twisting his head to leave each set of blades grotesquely bent and borderline useless. It was not until all of this was exactingly and entirely accomplished, rendering the Guysak completely immobile and its command system well and truly frozen, that Willow finally ceased.

Both bandits, having exited their respective cockpits, stared aghast at the electricity sparking from what remained of their mounts.

"Bloody hell, lady! That was a bit over the top, don't you think?" one said.

Willow popped the canopy and stared hard at the two hapless pilots, her dangerous expression daring them to utter any further peep of protest. They did not. "Maybe next time you'll think twice before messing with other people's baked goods," she said haughtily. And with that, she closed the glass once more, swung Zeke around, and headed off south.

Injuries or no, the Command Wolf had never before moved with such an easy, liquid grace.

It was technically still Dan's turn to pilot, but he, wisely, opted to keep his mouth shut.


	4. ZAC 2066: Chapter 4

_**Chapter 4**_

"Alright, pal. I think with some rest overnight you'll be feeling better in the morning," Dan said to Zeke after poking around in the systems' various menus. "You got lucky back there. This could've been a whole lot worse."

Zeke softly growled his thanks.

He was settled beside a magnificent stone arch, one of many breathtaking natural stone formations in the area. While Dan finished up the recovery process fine-tuning (and secretly cleaning out the crumb-filled cockpit a bit, so as to spare Willow the emotional trauma), Willow was setting up their stove near Zeke's front paw, and gathering together the ingredients they would need for a simple supper.

Dan jumped down and joined Willow by the stove, sitting down next to her in the cool sand. Casting a glance at his pies off to one side, he turned to her. "You alright?"

She nodded, lighting the stove and pouring water into a small pot she'd set above it. Also looking at his pies, she gestured towards them. "How'd they fare?"

"One of the crusts had a little piece break off, but otherwise they're unharmed."

She nodded again.

"I'm sorry about your cookies, Willow. I really am. I know how hard you worked on them."

"Yeah." She sighed, then mustered a smile. "Not like you didn't work hard on your pies too, though. And they'll probably taste much better than my cookies would have. Not to mention being a lot more impressive to look at."

Dan didn't say anything for a moment, then took a deep breath. "At least your cookies were more genuine," he said softly.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh come on, Willow. Isn't it obvious why I tried so hard?"

She poured some beans, a bit of oil, and some seasonings into the now-boiling water, a small smile - a real one this time - playing about her mouth. "It is. But I get it. I'm kind of worried, too, you know."

"You are?"

"Of course. You're the love of my life, and Phoenix is my very dear friend. I'm worried you two won't like each other." She paused, then continued, "And by the way, just for the record, I really don't mind if you pilot Zeke most of the time. I know it's a little tight for you back there in the jumpseat." The wolf picked his big head up at the sound of his name and regarded his pilots silently. "I guess it's just...when I'm facing something scary, I feel better when I'm at his controls. Safer."

Dan nodded. Given her history, this made sense, and besides, he could certainly relate.

"And I've definitely felt scared about all of this," she continued. "But, you know..." She paused again, thinking how she could best relate what she needed to say. She gave the beans a stir. "Please understand, that Phoenix and I are very, very close. He means so much to me. And his presence with me in Fort Zephyr back then, when it felt like it would be just Zeke and me, alone, forever...that was such a gift. But," she added significantly, turning to Dan and meeting his dark eyes, "when I was living on that empty base for so long...you were the one I was thinking of, and you were the one I was waiting for."

Dan felt a stirring of deep warmth in the center of his chest. How on Zi had he ever gotten so lucky? He put his arm around her, leaning her into him, and kissed her temple. "I'm sure," he ventured bravely, "that I'm going to like Phoenix very much." Willow sighed happily in response, and Dan smiled up at the rock formations and night sky above them.

-.-.-.-

A charming red farmhouse came into view beyond resplendent rows of trees the next evening. Dan's stomach churned, but he took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. Things were going to be alright. Willow wouldn't be so very fond of Phoenix if he were a horrible person.

There was an open space in front of the farmhouse, and it was here that Dan brought Zeke to a halt, lying him down with his chin to the ground. The canopy swung upwards just as the house's front door opened, spilling a welcoming beam of light into the yard. Dan purposely did not look at the two silhouetted figures emerging, but instead focused on undoing his safety harness, and helping Willow out of the cockpit, not that she'd needed his assistance in doing so for several years now.

Zeke lifted himself slightly and they carefully retrieved the three pie boxes from his belly compartment. Dan shifted the boxes to under one arm and took Willow's hand with the other, setting his nerves. Zeke watched as his two beloved pilots walked over to greet their hosts, and felt, as he so often did, a depthless affection for them both that seemed to overflow his Zoid core and overwhelm his memory banks.

Áthas was a short, curvy young woman with wavy blonde hair and a brilliant smile lighting up her round face. "Welcome, welcome! We're so glad you made it!" Her ice blue eyes alighted immediately on Willow. "And you, my dear, are surely the famous Willow."

"I am!" Willow grinned, glancing at Dan slyly. "Did you hear that? I'm famous!"

"I'm Áthas. It's so lovely to meet you, thank you for coming!" The two women embraced as if they'd known each other for decades and this reunion had been years in coming.

Dan turned to Phoenix, who was even taller and better-looking than he'd feared. The redhead's eyes were on him as well, and Dan noticed immediately their shocking green. But as they held each other's gaze, he noticed something else, as well: there was uncertainty lurking in their viridescent depths. Uncertainty! Phoenix was nervous, too. And it was at that moment that Dan relaxed completely. This man standing before him, after all, was the reason Willow was still alive. A good soul.

"Dan," Phoenix said, holding out his right hand. "I'm Phoenix."

Dan took his hand immediately and shook firmly, confidently. He liked and respected what he saw. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

There wasn't time for anything further than this, though, for Áthas had already shifted her attention to Dan. "Dan, welcome!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. He laughed, awkwardly shifting the pie boxes to one side, and allowed himself to be enfolded in her enthusiastic hug.

Willow, meanwhile, turned to her old friend. Phoenix smiled shyly at her, overwhelmed with joy to be seeing her again but unsure how much of this was proper to express in front of their respective partners, but she thankfully answered that question for him. "I missed you so much!" she cried, diving into his arms, and he was only too happy for the opportunity to hold her close and kiss the top of her head.

"Shall we?" Áthas said now, her face absolutely radiant with delight. "Please do come in; dinner will be ready very shortly and we can help you both get settled." She looked at the boxes Dan was still holding. "And what have you got there, dear? Can I help you carry some?"

Dan glanced over at Phoenix. "Gemberry pies," he said.

"Gemberry?" Phoenix gasped, his eyes wide. "Those are my favorite! I haven't had any in years and years and years! How did you -"

"I know a guy," Dan replied with a grin, immensely pleased with Phoenix's reaction.

"How lovely! Let's warm those up a bit in the oven, then. Come, come!" Áthas grabbed Dan's arm and all but hauled him up the front steps, and so he had no choice but to follow her, taking care to keep his balance so as not to drop his precious cargo.

Phoenix made to follow them into the house, but then he paused and turned to cast an amused look at Willow. He raised his eyebrows, shifting his rising sun facial marking up with them, and shook his head. No further commentary was needed.

She threw her head back and laughed. Elation to finally be back in her dear friend's company once more was filling her to bursting, and they both knew it. Phoenix took her hand, kissing it once for old time's sake, and led her into the house and the warm light within.


End file.
